Main menu

Category Archives: Italy

Post navigation

After posting my most recent entry I began to look more seriously for the “Vita S. Martini” by Venantius Fortunatus in translation. It hasn’t brought much to light. I cannot read medieval Latin, but there is an Italian translation available in book form, which might be my only option. There is also a German version available but which costs an arm and a leg (and really, I don’t want to spend that much on a hobby). There are plenty of English-language academic papers about aspects of the text, but I don’t believe that an English translation exists. If any buffs of early medieval literature can prove me wrong, please have at it, as I would love to know!

I have a confession to make. Beyond all the other things I am doing right now – singing, translating, assisting in a bookselling business – I have a project in mind for the future. I want to put together a guidebook for the Via Raetia.
There are guides and books for following the Via Claudia Augusta, the first Roman-made road to cross the Alps in this region, but I have yet to find a modern tourist guide in English for it’s younger sister, the Via Raetia. The Via Claudia has an “official” route which one can follow ona bike, and much of it may accurately follow the old road. The Via Raetia does not, and here you can see why:

Clearly one can’t just go traipsing across private property, let alone tell others to do so.

Walking, cycling, sights along the way, history, archaeology, culture, on the route between Augsburg and… well, how comprehensive do I want this to be? I could keep it within Bavaria (Augsburg to Mittenwald) or publish installments (Part 2, North Tyrol from Mittenwald to the Brenner Pass, Part 3 Italy: Brennero to Verona). Even if I had no other work, this would take a few years of research, travel, exploration. I’m not sure I’ll ever get to do it. (Note to any publishing houses: I’m here, “boots on the ground”, if you are considering something along these lines from a distance.)

But all this will have to wait another year at least, because for professional reasons I am going to be spending a considerable amount of time at the other end of Bavaria, namely closer to the Czech border.

Continuing in the looking-up-one-thing-and-finding-the-tip-of-the-iceberg vein, I recently began looking into an assumption I had made a while back — that the name Tirol was derived from the Roman fortress Teriolis (from which the village of Zirl takes its name). It turns out that this is completely unsubstantiated, and that the name Tirol came to these lands by being ruled by the Earls of Tirol, who in turn took their name from their home, the castle Schloss Tirol, by around 1141.
Whence the castle got its name remains a mystery. Wikipedia mentions that tir meant territory or land in both Latin and Old Irish (Celtic), and that earlier written versions of the name include de Tirale and de Tyrols.

Ah, that mysterious “y” which one finds in the name when written in English! I had always wondered about that.

Then, poking around for anything on the internet concerning the origin of the name, I came across this interesting treatise (de). (I am not sure what to make of it, exactly — it reads a bit like Tolkien’s backstory in the appendices of “The Lord of the Rings”. It also shares some word-for-word passages with this.) The author (if he is the author) postulates that the rocky hill on which the castle sits had been taken in the early middle ages by conquering Germanic tribes, who named it in honor of the Germanic god Tyr (en) (aka Ziu*, both connected in turn to Zeus deus, deva, and our Tuesday). He adds that before the castle there had been an early Christian church on the site, and it is known that those early Christian churches often were built right atop pre-Christian holy sites. So it’s possible that the name Tirol (or Tyrol) is a very old, pre-Christian one.

The first Earls of Tirol were apparently Bavarian (Bavaria was running the place at the time) but they adopted the name of their castle rather than their family name, which lends a little credibility to the theory that the place name had some ancient meaning. Which nobody would have remembered by the 12th century.

The author also mentions a very curious book called Das erfundene Mittelalter (“the invented middle ages”) by a “chronology critic”, who claims that all the years between 614 and 911 didn’t exist, that everything purported to have happened in that time, didn’t, because of some sort of massive calendar jump. Scientists and archaeologists have debunked this theory.

And, completely unrelated to these places: the name Tauern, given to the Alpine mountain region of Salzburg and Carinthia, is evidently connected to the name of its earlier inhabitants, the Taurisci. After the Battle of Telamon in 225 B.C.E., the beaten Taurisci were allowed to resettle further southwest at what is now called – wait for it — Torino, or in English, Turin.

*Ziu and Zirl sound suspiciously alike. Is it not possible that, the Romans perhaps having latinized an already-given Raetian name for that hill there (now the Martinsbühel), the two names might indeed be related, by way of Ziu? The Roman name for Wilten, Veldidena, is thought to have come from a pre-existing name. Did the Raetians share any linguistic origins with their northern neighbors? One might assume yes, as Germanic and Celtic were both Indo-European. And gods are completely transferable, as history shows us.

** The name Via Raetia is a later invention, the Roman name for this road is forgotten, if indeed it had ever had a name. // Der Name Via Raetia ist eine spätere Erfindung, der römische Name für diese Straße ist vergessen, wenn es denn jemals einen Namen hatte.

An artist’s rendition of the stone layers of an inside wall in the kleine Therme.

Kempten, in the Allgäu region, is one of Germany’s oldest cities. Earliest mention appears to be by the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, who called it Kambodunon and wrote that it was a town of the Celtic Estiones. When the Romans invaded in 15 BCE, they built a classical Roman city on the plateau overlooking the current modern town. Cambodunum‘s buildings were initially made of wood, and after a fire destroyed the town in 69 CE, it was rebuilt in stone, and it is these remains which the visitor sees at the Cambodunum Archaeology Park (g).

Above, the remains of the Temple District (top). The population of Cambodunum consisted not only of Romans but of assimilated (“romanized”) locals and immigrants, and each group had their own set of gods to worship. In Cambodunum, the temples of local gods and Roman gods existed side by side. The low stone walls define the excavated walls and foundations, as for example the Forum in what is now a large lawn.

The kleine Therme (“small bathhouse” — I was unable to figure out it there was a large one as well, possibly reburied for conservation purposes or lost to centuries of urban construction) is on display inside a protective building. It was built for the town’s chief magistrate, his staff and guests, and featured hot and cold baths, a steam room, and latrines. When Rome abandoned its transmontane colonies and eventually went down itself with the invading hordes, it unfortunately took its knowledge of its infrastructure maintenance with it. In a 2007 interview for Salon, historian Katherine Ashenburg explains why the following centuries of life in Europe were filthy ones.

Random piles of building stones within the park. Not everything can by reconstructed.

Inching my way out of this bad coldflu bronchitis, I turned to facebook to ask my professional singer friends for their personal last-ditch remedies when a gig is getting near and the vocal folds are still swollen (and therefor not, as we say in singing circles, “approximating”). I don’t mean full-out injury, but rather that recovery time when you’re almost, but not quite, there. This question generated a long and entertaining discussion about the pros and cons of certain medications and methods, which I have boiled down to its essence here for you:

Bromelain, a clear winner with the singers in Germany. It’s made from pineapples, is available without a prescription and reduces swelling. My Austrian pharmacy sold me a less-powerful version of it called Wobenzym, but said that they could order Bromelain.

Ibuprofen. There was a bit of an debate about this. Ibubrofen is an NSAID (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug) which works by thinning the blood, like aspirin, but which might lead to real damage if your cords are so raw that the capillaries are near the surface. Some people say “absolutely no ibuprofen”, others say it’s the only option short of steroids, which come with their own set of risk factors.

Some prescription-only suggestions: Serrapeptase (in Germany called Aniflazym), dexibuprofen, and the once-in-a-decade last-ditch option of cortisone in the form of prednisone and its cousin prednisolone (I guess if you really can’t cancel without dire consequences. But you’ll be out of commission for a while afterward so it really is not often recommended.)

Ibuprofen, Bromelain, inhaling the steam from elderflower (Hollunder) tea (the kind from the pharmacy, not the supermarket), gargling with salt water, nasal irrigation with salt water (boil the water first and let it cool to a usable temperature! This procedure led to a few deaths in the U.S. from people unwittingly using contaminated water from the tap. Better safe than sorry!)

My prescription-only throat spray is Locabiosol, which I get when I am see-the-doctor sick (usually once a year at the most) and then use what remains of it during the rest of year for those borderline cases. A good over-the-counter substitute is Klosterfrau Islandisch Moos throat spray, a little bottle of which I keep at the theater all through the season. I am also a big fan of Golia lozenges, especially the little ones, which are small enough and soft enough for me to keep pressed onto a back molar while I am onstage. I was told that they were also Pavarotti’s favorite throat lozenges. I believe they are only available in Italy (I have generous friends who get bags of them for me when they go to Milan.)

If you’ve come here in search of a remedy for your own swollen cords, then best of luck and get well soon!